Smashmouth B2B Blog: Sales & Marketing Demand Gen

Last week we conducted a poll on LinkedIn where we asked: Inbound Marketing & Outbound Marketing - what is your mix for lead gen?

Mostly Inbound

Mostly Outbound

Both Equally

Inbound Only

Outbound Only

The complete results were published today on the DemandGen Reports site. The short version excerpted from the article:

The experts balance Inbound Marketing with Outbound Marketing. So the random sales and marketing execs may want to pay attention to a few points:

• Most companies rely on a mix of Inbound and Outbound Marketing• Outbound Marketing seems to have a larger portion of the marketing mix in general• Demand Gen specialists balance their mix of Inbound and Outbound 30% more than generalists• The mania of Inbound Marketing taking over the marketing mix is either just that, mania, or it is still in its infancy. Don't get caught up in the hype just yet.• A balanced approach seems to be the mix of choice with a slight favor to Outbound activities

As a side note, a regular feature of my blog, which is focused on BtoB marketing and demand gen, are product reviews. So below is a mini product review of LinkedIn Polls:

The application is extremely easy to use, and the ability to promote it free to your network or paid through LinkedIn's systems provides incredible flexibility. We highly recommend using the paid LinkedIn poll feature for two reasons. First, it can be targeted to specific demographics. Second, it randomizes responses in a manner different than if you were to share the poll with your network. One feature missing though, is the ability to embed the poll on other pages (such as a blog, or corporate site). Having this widget capability would be huge.